Tag: The Magpie Arc

Ely Folk Festival is, above all, great fun. I went for the second year running. For the second year running I chose it in preference to a guest ticket to the more famous names at Hyde Park. For the second year running, I wasn’t disappointed.

There are three stages at Ely: Peregrine – the Main Stage, with a roof to shelter from the sun (much needed this year), and with plenty of space to spread out into open air, ever nearer to the bar; Kingfisher, the indoor concert stage, which also held ceilidhs, workshops, yoga; Nightingale – described as a “café-style venue”, it has the feel of a local folk club.

In 2024, I had a great time despite the unseasonal rain and cold. This year the sun shone and we had the kind of joyful and celebratory event from which the word ‘festival’ is derived.

The thing with a folk festival is that you go for the whole experience. One of the things I liked last year was that you arrive, at the Stuntney Estate site on the outskirts of Ely, to find Stewards entertaining in the covered areas. It’s a splendid idea given how many stewards are also musicians; it’s an even better idea given that a duo I saw last year, Acoustic Spin, stuck in my mind – and I found they were playing on the Kingfisher Stage later on the Friday evening, as were three other local artists. It struck me that this was a clear demonstration of Ely’s links not just to the town but to the local music scene. This is as it should be – calling something a ‘Folk’ Festival means it needs to relate to a community as much as it does to a genre (or genres) of music.

Friday

One of the delights of being at a festival is “the juxtaposition of things”. On the Friday, I wandered to all three stages for the first sets to get a feel.

Honey And The Bear, melodic as ever were playing Peregrine but, as befits a main stage, had a much fuller sound than just the duo. In my head, and with the intrusion of modern technology, I was still somewhere between home and Festival: Honey And The Bear paid tribute to the RNLI from the stage; the News told of people being rescued from boats; the England and India cricket teams were slugged it out in the Test Match.

I wandered next to Kingfisher, the second stage where Servance was playing, and finally nipped to across to the folk stage, Nightingale, where I recognised Martin Browne and Liz Padgett from one of the Lincolnshire folk clubs. That’s the delight of a festival isn’t it – the variety, the simultaneity, the talent; the wider experience of food tents, Marquees and the randomly heard accordion, whistle or guitar as you pass a camp.

Given that we were in the middle weekend of July and the temperature was going up to 84°, this was festival weather as it should be – and I’d not yet made it to 8:30pm on the first evening. I wasn’t yet totally lost in the music and the ‘festival vibe’ but I was beginning to leave behind the outside world.

So the evening passed. I watched the whole of the Acoustic Spin set, which meant I missed most of Tu-kay and Ryan on the main stage, from their last couple of songs I wished I’d seen more. But that’s changed too, nowadays – a Festival can also be a place to catch a couple of songs and then catch up on the artists’ website or on YouTube or Bandcamp … which is how I discover they are playing the Brasenose Fringe at Cropredy this year.

The sound of accordion and fiddler wafted from an impromptu get together nearby. I went to the folk tent and caught Simon George-Kelso singing ‘The Humpback Whale’. I know nothing about him, remember him from last year and I’m wondering if he’d travel up to my part of the world.

The daylight slipped away, slowly giving a different feel to the field. The folk club Open Mic closed; an impromptu session continued outside; Soloman Smith was playing the Kingfisher and the crowd built up for Sam Kelly & The Lost Boys to finish the evening on the main stage.

Except it wasn’t finished – people still wandered around and there was a ceilidh until 1:00 a.m. A long drive meant I didn’t make it but I’ve no doubt many did so that they could round off a warm summer’s day. Ely Folk Festival was under way and the outside world was disappearing from my thinking.

Saturday

If the above doesn’t already tempt you to think about going to Ely 2026 – which will be the fortieth year of the Ely Folk Festival – let’s move on to Saturday, which additionally has what I’ll call ‘the Festival in the town’.

In Ely itself, the city centre gets taken over by the festival vibe on a Saturday. There are: Morris Teams (lots of them), hot weather, adults, music, blue skies, children, noise, colour, vibrancy, festival goers, residents. You get the gist – to mix my metaphors, Ely becomes a cacophony of colours. If you want the wider tourist experience, there’s the glory of the ‘Cathedral of the Fens’.

On the festival site, by late afternoon, there’d been chance: to do yoga; to go to workshops (stepdance, fiddle, bodhran, whistle, tunes) and a shanty session; to listen to Elly Tree, Keith Donnelly (on his own and later with Lauren South), Isle ‘Ave A Shanty, Nick Lawrence, The Cain Pit, Roswell Road. More widely, there’s children’s entertainment on site; round the edges are clothing and food stands. I chatted to the cheery Moor and Coast team who I see at various festivals and enjoyed their banter (as good as their food).

By half past four, the ‘festival in the town’ has merged with the ‘festival on the site’ as the Morris Teams et al have returned. The cacophony of colour and sound is now packed into one place and a walk from one end of the festival site to the other took me past: an impromptu session in the eating area, the Morris dancers in full regalia in the centre of the site, children in the playing area, a raucous  “What shall we do with the drunken sailor” chorale from maybe a hundred plus voices, a well-supported beer tent, and a crowd watching Monroe’s Revenge playing bluegrass on the main stage.

Festival scheduling can be complex. It’s a thing that the Ely organisers do well as there’s usually time to see artists on the Peregrine stage as well as on the Kingfisher stage. The times are scheduled so that one stage is playing as the other is setting up and there’s the right amount of overlap. Because they are at opposite ends of the site a) there is no sound leakage and b) you get chance to pass the Nightingale stage and the impromptu sessions along the way. Canny organising.

On a sunny Saturday when food and drink have been had, good company shared Ags(friends you were due to meet, friends you bumped into and strangers who you’ve chatted to in a cheery atmosphere), music and dance have been part of the mix, a festival needs to build up to a good finish for the evening. The three stages did this by finishing their night with: a Tunes and Songs session in Nightingale; the fun of Danny & The Champions of the World in Kingfisher; the uniqueness of The Dhol Foundation on Peregrine. Along the way were Sound of the Sirens, Paul McClure, Gaz Brookfield, Eve Selis, Ags Connolly and the Oysterband. Again, canny organising.

To pick up on two of the above …

For me, there’s a festival category, TAINS: “The Artist I’d Not Seen before and I’ve since told people about”. This time, here, it was Paul McClure – he had great interaction with the audience, nice playing, entertaining songs. He also came out with the best line of the weekend. Delivered deadpan, as an introduction to a song about kids and shopping, he said “This song goes to dispelling the myth that the life of a touring musician is sex and drugs and rock and roll … I can do those things, in fact I’m doing two of them now”. Speedily delivered and passed by, nicely done.

The other mention is for Oysterband. It was a delight to be there, standing in the throng for ‘Put Out The Lights’ amongst a loud, singing, cheering, audience that didn’t want them to go. If this really was one of their final concerts they’ve left us in style, a reminder of their crowd-pleasing best.

Ely Festival is held at the time of year it never gets properly dark and the festival site remained lively, a session in the round in one place, Morris musicians being creative elsewhere, twilight falling.

Sunday

How to follow those two days? – you follow them with an equally splendid Sunday.

More workshops (Morris, banjo et al), more tunes sessions and fenland songs, more family shows, and a wide mixture of music, from local competition winners to the internationalism of Martin Simpson having just flown in from the USA. He was self-confessedly jet-lagged but still able to play like no-one else in the world.

Ezio was new to me but clearly has a big – and deserved – local following – easy guitar playing mixed between electric and acoustic, flat pick and lead … and the second-best line of the weekend, “I don’t have a set list, it’d be like having a list of things to do when you’re making love”.

Buck And The Lowlanders, as you might guess from their name, brought good time Americana. Of ‘newer artists’ to grab my attention, Lauren South has the voice of an angel and Fraser Morgan a lively – by which I mean lively! – folk-punk style.

The final evening was kicked off by Gaelforce – folk-rock with electric guitar, fiddle and bagpipes above a driving rhythm section, ‘The Coal’ coming over particularly powerfully from the new album.

The Magpie Arc followed – the departing Martin Simpson rocking it on lead guitar as the band played tracks “from our most progressive to our most traditional” – the latter included ‘The Gay Goshawk’ and the Depression era ‘Pans Of Gravy’. ‘Don’t Leave The Door Open’, as rocky as any and with wild fiddle, was described as “a breakup song on first ear [great phrase] but it’s actually about Scottish independence”.

Having delighted ceilidh dancers earlier in the day, Blackbeard’s Tea Party finished the main stage with a rousing set, in varying costumes, the weather still warm enough for short sleeved shirts and the band’s great good humour. As an example, they played ‘Jim Jones’ to “dance moves stolen from Suzi Quattro”. If you’ve seen them you’ll not be surprised, if you haven’t it’s a fun way to end a festival.

Except that’s not how I ended; I made a point of wandering across the site. People were still enjoying themselves away from the stages. I also called in at the Kingfisher stage to see Tin Giants and discovered stunning musicianship on multiple instruments (“Breton transcendence” was jotted in my notes). I reckoned both bands would be happy with the description in my final note “Blackbeard’s Tea Party to Tin Giants – from the ridiculous to the sublime”.

Ely Folk Festival 2025 – what a splendid event.

Mike Wistow

Festival website: https://elyfolkfestival.co.uk

The Festival In The Town: